The news is out that cat pets in World of Warcraft will sit in your lap if you sit down. Players everywhere are testing this out, and having their furry companions join them. There’s also been one player who shared his story about how he remembers his beloved cat in WoW and had the joy of seeing him leap into his lap unexpectedly with this new addition. See details at SiliconANGLEwritten by Kyt Dotson.

The MMORPG World of Warcraft is coming up on its 10th anniversary and there have even been players (still playing) who started right at its onset. This interview, however, is with a player who started slightly more recently–only seven years. That said, seven years playing the same game means a lot of changes have been seen and a certain amount of cultural shift.

World of Warcraft has seen numerous expansions, the addition of races, classes, and even a dramatic change to the very map that the game is played on itself (see: Cataclysm) and even the addition of whole new maps (see: Outlands and Pandaria.)

World of Warcraft has an end of Summer’s End celebration that lasts 18 hours (total) with fireworks displays occurring over the capital cities in the virtual world, on the hour, every hour. Amerist, Jason, and Nutmeg take a trek through Azeroth (the land of the virtual world of WoW) to watch one of these displays.

In what seems like an unexpected turn of events, Blizzard had their user database hacked into and some of the confidential user data exfiltrated—although Blizzard is quick to point out that financial information was not touched, so your credit cards are safe. What the hackers did get access to, however, happens to be e-mails, encrypted passwords, and the answers to security questions. As a result, it’s time for you to change your passwords people. Kyt Dotson over at SiliconANGLE has the nitty gritty details on tap.

World of Warcraft celebrates the summer equinox with blazing cyan fires, tossing torches, and fireworks! Much like the United States – well, except for the cyan fires and the torch tossing.

“This festival takes akin to a multitude of European-based midsummer festivals that celebrate the summer solstice, or the passing of the sun from its highest point in the sky. In many agrarian cultures, the primary sprouting and and sowing season of spring has ended and now the summer growth is preparing the crops for the next few months and harvest. As a result, a great deal of work has been done and there’s more to come.

“So many of these celebrations involve celebrating the work done for the community and enjoy the warm weather.

Worlds Inc. has filed suit against Activision-Blizzard over the use of technology that fits with patents the received last decade entitled "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space." This is one of six patents the company owns involving the interaction of players in highly immersive 3D spaces.

Worlds Inc. has alleged that multiple titles from the game publisher violates their patents such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty.

"Technologies created by Worlds have helped the businesses of virtual worlds gaming and the sale of virtual goods to grow into a multi-billion dollar industry," said Worlds Inc. CEO Thom Kidrin. "While we are pleased to see that the gaming industry and its rapidly growing customer base have enthusiastically embraced our patented technologies, we deserve fair compensation for their use."

Back in the early days of MMORPGs—and those days it was 2004—the MMOs started to realize that people wanted more to do than just new content involving episodes and new villains and higher level caps. Instead, MMO companies discovered that people wanted to experience in-game what happened to them outside in the global culture. So City of Heroes added the Winter Event.

By far the most amusing phenomena that rose out of the original 2004 Winter Event in City of Heroes happened to be the city-region bosses the Winter Lords. These were gigantic snowmen appearing about ten stories tall, textured as if made entirely out of snow, with icicle noses.